Elite Setup

Installing the things

Whether you're trying to set up either the Elite or Lite you'll need the Arduino IDE installed and up to date.

The Elite runs at a different speed to the Lite to accommodate the lower voltages needed for microsd card operation. Hence it is important to install the necessary board files and upload sketches to the elite correctly, or you could risk bricking your Elite! (If you do so, see the troubleshooting section)

To begin, you’ll need to point the Arduino IDE board manager to a custom URL. Open up Arduino, then go to the Preferences (File > Preferences). Then, towards the bottom of the window, paste this URL into the 'Additional Board Manager URLs' text box:

You can add multiple URLs by clicking the window icon, and pasting in one URL per line.

Click OK. Then open the Board Manager by clicking Tools, then hovering over the Board selection tab and clicking Board Manager.

Search for ‘sparkfun’ in the Board Manager. You should see the SparkFun AVR Boards package appear. Click install, wait a few moments, and all the .brd files you’ll need should be installed, indicated by the blue ‘Installed’ that is printed next to the package.

Uploading the firmware

Once all the necessities, you're ready to get your first script up and running. Go to the script converter in the sidebar. And toggle to Elite.

In this example we'll type…

DELAY 1000
STRING hello world

This tells Malduino to wait 1000 milliseconds (a second), then type 'hello world'. Next, click convert and select your keyboard layout at the bottom (This is the keyboard language of the computer you'll be executing on), then hit download.

Extract the zip and open the 'elite' folder. Then open the containing .ino (Arduino) file. This should open in your Arduino IDE.

Plug in your Elite!

In the menu bar select: Tools > Board > Sparkfun Pro Micro

Then select: Tools > Processor > ATmega32u4 (3.3v, 8MHz) This step is important

Next go to: Tools > Port This chooses which device you are uploading to, if there is more than one here, unplug your malduino, note which ports are present, plug malduino back in and see which port appears, this will be your malduino!

Finally go to Sketch > Upload

In the future you won't need to go through the process of using the Arduino IDE to upload to the Elite.

Setting up the microsd card

You'll need a microsd card formatted for FAT32. This process is trivial, in windows right click on your microsd card’s directory and choose 'Format' from the drop down menu. Make sure you choose FAT as the filesystem.

Uploading your Script

In the 'elite' folder from earlier you'll see a txt file, this is exactly the same as the short script we uploaded earlier. Put this txt file in your microsd card's root directory, and rename the file '1111.txt'. Remove the microsd card and insert it into your elite. As we named our script 1111.txt, all switches need to be in the 'on/up' position. Plug in your malduino and the script will run!

Future scripts

In the future you don't need to use the online converter*, just save your scripts as txt files onto the microsd card with a name representing the corresponding dip switch configuration and you're good to go.

*Unless you want to change the language of your elite and/or use special characters.